pridem per omnes provincias, et per urbes singulas, ordinati sunt Episcopi." "Long since, through all the Provinces and the the cities severally, Bishops have been ordained." These are most valuable citations, shewing the law and the fact in the Roman Empire, of the See-Bishopric, and the Provincial System. They are to be found in Keble's Hooker.*

But we now urge the See-Bishopric upon the Church, not as an isolated notion, not as a sectarian or denominational thing -but as merely one element of the great system of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, the Kingdom that is to conquer the world. We urge it simply as one of the elements of Organization in the Church. These are three in number:-First, the Apostle or Bishop in the city, having his See (Sedes or Cathedra) there; secondly, the Cathedral system, the Bishop's Church, in every city; and thirdly, the Provincial System, the system of Ecclesiastical Federation or Synodical Union, within the region that corresponds to the Provincia in the old Roman Empire.

We urge this one great system, in its three-fold perfection, in behalf of the Church herself, and her increase and progress in this great land. In behalf of this present Protestant Christianity, so broken and fragmentary, so full of prejudice, mistakes and misapprehensions, and yet so abundant in personal faith, and energy, and liberal free-handed zeal. And in behalf of humanity itself, which, in our great cities, is beginning to suffer the unutterable woes that poverty suffers in the great cities of Europe. We say, give us the power to organize the Church as in days of old, and our Bishops, our Clergy, our Deacons, our Laymen and Laywomen, will do, in our cities, the work that was done of old, and is now but poorly done by Protestant Societies and Romish Monastic Orders.

We call upon the Church, in her Great National Council, her General Convention, for these elements, this system of Organization, in behalf of the one nation that has the most business ability, the most organizing power, of any nation in the world, since the Roman people; perhaps, more even than

*Keble's Hooker, Eng. Ed., Vol. III, p. 184.

they. We say, Organize the Church by the See-Bishopric, the Cathedral System, the Synodical System, and, at once, you open endless progress to the Church, union to all American Christianity; and to all humanity a new era in all our cities; to poverty, disease and distress, once more the great work done by the Organized Christianity of each city, that of itself won the world to Christ.

And this we ask, that the Church may have it in her power to avail herself of the peculiar gift of the nation, the gift of Organization. We ask that the Church should make the See, the Cathedral, the Provincial System, her own, in order that the men who have the great national gift of organizing, administrative and executive ability, may have room and freedom to work for Christ; a basis for their peculiar abilities in the City and in the State, that they may be enabled to work for the Gospel in this land, as God has given them the talent.

This is the great business of this next General Convention. In the first place, to remove all obstacles to the See movement; to put our Constitution and Canons in such a position, that the Churchmen of every city may be enabled to elect their Bishops, to build their Cathedral, and thus to establish their local centre for Church work, of all kinds, in that city and the region round about. And next, we look for an arrangement, whereby all the Bishops and Dioceses of a given region, whether it only comprises the State, or more States than one, in extraordinary cases shall be enabled to combine in common work, Missionary, Educational and Philanthropic, over the whole region.

In order to do this, we ask first, that all obstacles, in the way of this action, be removed from our Constitution and Canons; and secondly, that our General Convention leave us no more under Congregational and Presbyterian ideas; but that they solemnly recognize and set forth our System in its elements and in its cöordinate unity-the Bishop or Apostle in the city, called from the city, residing in the city, with his See-House there, and his Church there.

And again, the Bishop's Church, his Cathedral, the beauty of holiness in worship and in work, the model Church to the

City and Diocese, of Liturgic Worship, of Church Music, of all the offices of Christian devotion, the centre of Christian benevolence, of good works among the poor, and sick and diseased; the centre, also, of Christian education, the Church to which the orphan and the widow will look forever with the eyes of hope and faith in Christ, and of thankfulness to their Father in Heaven. We want a clear acknowledgment and setting forth of this great element, this grand local realization of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth; this local habitation, which places the Bishop at once in his true position upon earth, as the Apostle of Christ to a sinful and miserable world; which makes him, as in the days of old, the Angel of the Church in that city. We want the Cathedral fully recognized, in our Constitution and Canons, as a Church element and a Church centre in our system.

And then we want all these centres of the Faith coördinated as in the days of old, in a system like to the ancient provincial system, a system whereby, through all the regions of the land, the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity may, nay, must, meet together, and do one general work in that region,-the Provincial System of the Primitive Church. All these should be recognized, in our Constitution and Canons, as our System—all impediments to its development done away, all freedom given, and the whole coordinated canonically, so that all shall work together as one well Organized Constitutional System; and thus, as the Church of God in this land, we shall, at last, have the power to do the work that is before us, of uniting all Christianity in the body of one Church, in the profession of one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.

Any one that aids in this work is simply helping on the grandest and the best work that the world has ever seen. Any one that impedes it, whether he knows it or not, is laboring to increase the present disorganization and anarchy of all Christianity that is not Roman Catholic; is keeping the Church disjointed, unorganized and feeble, and is promoting

*The Seven Stars are the Angels of the Seven Churches.-Rev. i. 20.

the growth and progress and dominion of Romanism in this land. For the Roman Catholic Church understands the value of the See. She will shortly have a Bishop in every city of the land. She knows the value of the Cathedral. Everywhere Roman Cathedrals are rising in our cities, and around them Schools, Hospitals, Orphan Houses. This fact of the Cathedral puts all others as denominations, their Churches as conventicles, their ministers as mere party leaders of a day. Rome knows the value of the Old System of the Church; and as all the old Churches of the East and the West, even our Mother Church of England, have this system, so has Rome; and here, in this land, she is now using it most energetically.

And, we forsooth! through the sin of England towards our forefathers, and from our own folly and weakness, having the Church, and the Faith, and the Holy Scriptures, and the Episcopate, are content to be Congregationalists in fact, to remain unorganized and crippled, unable to do the duty that we manifestly have towards this great land.

We say plainly, that to restore and recognize our System, in all its elements, and in its coordinate unity, this is to do the greatest work for the Reformation that has been done upon the earth. It is to shew the world that the work of Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley has not failed; but that, as they thought, there can be a Christianity Catholic, but not Roman, pure in doctrine, holy and uncorrupt in life, with the Bible open and read by all, full of life and energy, and full of the spirit of unity and progress. This is what we may be to this country and to the world.

But, if we remain without the System of the Church, as we are, the disorganization of Protestant sects continues and increases. Rome, having these elements of power, gains in our cities increase of means, of population, of influence; and, finally, we have the Romish lust of dominion and wealth on the one hand, and the lawless, godless spirit of unbelief on the other, producing among us the evils that they have in Europe for almost a thousand years. Every one, therefore, we say, that urges on the acceptation and the acknowledgment of the

Church System, its completion and organization, is preventing enormous evils for this land; is conferring upon it and upon the world illimitable blessings, whose magnitude and glory God only knows. And every one that stands in the way, and attempts to retain us in our present unorganized state, is simply laboring in behalf of religious disorganization and unbelief, and anarchy of doctrine and of morality first; and then is acting in behalf of the Roman Bishop in every city as against our own; and of Romanism, and all its evils and corruptions, political and religious, over this great land.